Hope and Imagination - Places

An African sunset seen in a Cincinnati sunrise

A few mornings ago, I didn’t feel like I was standing before a Cincinnati sunrise but instead an African sunset. I have been to Africa twice (South Africa in 2015 and Kenya in 2019) and both times were amazing beyond words. One of the things that photographer friends of mine told me was to be sure to try to do the “traditional” African sunset photo of the red/orange sky with the silhouetted tree in the foreground. Here’s one of those photos - this from the Masai Mara region of Kenya in 2019

There truly is something remarkable about African sunsets. I don’t know what it is but there is a beautifully unqiue quality to them that is simply best seen in person (and photographs as well).

Well, to my surprise, like I shared above, I felt the other morning like I was taking in an African sunset as I saw the sun starting to rise here in Cincinnati.

There was a different kind of tree and a different kind of foreground but a remarkable similarity in the color and (by intention) in the style of the photograph.

Imagination is a remarkable thing in that it can take us to places very different from where we may physically be. Science fiction stories, for example, can take us a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away or traveling at warp speed to strange new worlds and new civilations and to boldly go where no one has gone before. They can take us to places we have never dreamed of going and can inspire us with ideas we had never considered. Or imagination can simply transport us to a new place (maybe not even in a galaxy far far away). Like I shared in my previous post, imagination can bring us into the lives of people far different from ourselves and it can also help us to to se places in new ways.

Sometimes hope can arise from moving (even in our imagination) out of our immediate reality - as an escape or in the dreaming of what was at one point or what could be in the future. In this case for me, it was connecting back to two beautiful times in my life when I was in Kenya and in South Africa - remembering the people who I came to meet, the beauty I saw, the courage that challenged and pushed me, and the wonder of it all.

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Here are a few more photos from that same morning...

New podcast and focus for week 3 of hope was shared today by OnBeing - look for more on that in the coming days.

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

PS - Scout just sneaking into frame when the heron took flight...